A message from Andrew Rasiej, Tech President's Publisher

Thank you for visiting techPresident, where politics and technology meet. We’re asking our readers to help support the site. Let us tell you why:

Since 2007, we've expanded techPresident's staff and daily work to exhaustively look at how technology is changing politics, government and civic life. To provide the independent and deeply informed journalism we do, we need to find ways to support this growth that will allow us to keep the majority of our content free.

An Open Government Law for Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett has signed a law that puts government payments to contractors and employees' compensation on a searchable state webiste, the Pittsburge Tribune-Review reports:

Angela Zaydon, director of legal and public policy for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, said the legislation "isn't the end-all be-all" of public record disclosure. "But it is one-stop shopping for citizens who have general questions about state government," she said.

The website will phase in through 2014. The first phase will include names of vendors and amounts they've been paid. By 2013, compensation and salary information for employees will be available.

By 2014, program descriptions and performance data would be included for payments.

Of note: The Tribune reports that this law will cover all three branches of government, legislative, executive and judicial. It will also be worth watching to see if the website, which will be called PennWATCH, is machine-accessible as well as searchable; the legislation does not specify what format the information should be released in.